


transmission

by badacts



Category: All For the Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: 5+1 Things, Established Relationship, M/M, long distance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-18
Updated: 2016-06-18
Packaged: 2018-07-15 21:49:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7239820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badacts/pseuds/badacts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Living alone is more of an adjustment than Neil likes to admit. Or, 5 times they talk on the phone and one time they don't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	transmission

**Author's Note:**

> This was a prompt fill for Andreil + Things you said over the phone, which grew because I'm a wordy sucker.

1) _Tell me._

Living alone is more of an adjustment than Neil likes to admit.  Andrew had taken a break over summer between graduating and signing with one of the teams that were circling him with their (frankly, generous) offers.  Neil throws himself in and signs straight away.  He considers what team he wants to be with, of course, and takes Kevin’s advice on what’s suitable, but at the time he is in good form after spring championships and it seems stupid to waste that.

He looks back on that summer fondly, though.  They’d split their time between travelling and living in the house in Columbia.  Kevin had signed before graduation so went straight from Fox Tower to his new city.  Aaron moved north with Katelyn, and Nicky had gone back to Germany in a frantic fit of excitement.  It had been a new experience for both Neil and Andrew to spend so much time alone together without constant interruptions.

Living by himself is different, though.  He and Andrew aren’t loud people by nature, so he’s used to the quiet.  But he constantly looks up expecting to find Andrew across the table from him, or perched in the window with a cigarette and a mug of coffee going cold, or relaxed across the couch with the television muted in the background.  He wakes up expecting a warm body rather than a stretch of cold sheets, or at least the reminders that someone laid there just a few minutes earlier.

Neil has learned how to miss people over the last five years, as his family have graduated and moved away.  It has been bittersweet, not like the tearing grief that is all he knew before.  But he hasn’t ever missed someone like this, like he’s forgotten a step in the staircase every moment he looks for Andrew and finds him gone.

It isn’t every day, but it’s been making things – uncomfortable.  And not for the first time, Neil has been very grateful to have his phone.

Andrew isn’t a big talker.  He hums, mostly, but he answers questions and recounts his day when Neil asks him about it.  Their lives are parallels – they get up at the same time in the mornings, their practices usually match up, and their game nights are often the same despite the time zones.  It’s comforting to know that when Neil drops into bed at the end of the day, Andrew will be waiting for his phone to ring.  It’s better when Neil’s phone rings in his pocket and it’s Andrew at the other end.

Sometimes Neil misses him.  Those days, he’s glad for Andrew’s voice when he can’t have his presence.

2) _I’m fine._

After being long-distance for the better part of a year, Neil is intimately familiar with how Andrew’s voice sounds over the phone.

That term – _long-distance_ – is one that Nicky used to describe what they were doing.  Neil has adopted it and uses it with everyone except for Andrew.  It’s apt, in a way.  When he thinks of Andrew now, he thinks of everything that makes Andrew, and then he thinks of the miles between them like a physical thing.

Andrew is home, familiar as air and the wind and the sun.  Which is why Neil immediately notices when Andrew sounds distinctly raspy.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you clear your throat so much,” he comments eventually.  

“I’m fine,” Andrew replies.  His voice is usually pleasantly smooth, which had seemed out of place on a man so prickly when Neil first met him.  Right now he sounds rough and tired, like he wants to cough but won’t.

“That’s my line.”

“It’s a virus,” Andrew says, unimpressed by the joke.

“I know.  Mark texted and mentioned that you were out of practice today,” Neil says, the implied so don’t bother trying to say you aren’t that sick hopefully clear.  Neil was worried, a little, when the defensive coach had messaged him – he’s used to Andrew being stoic, but he’s also used to Andrew being in impossibly good health despite his shit diet and his smoking habit.  

“Did the team doc give you something to take?”

“You don’t need a prescription for cold and flu medication.”

“And you’re taking it, right?”

“I’m an adult,” Andrew snaps, which isn’t an answer anyway.  Andrew doesn’t even like to take Tylenol when he’s in pain these days, like he hadn’t willing ingested cracker dust a few years ago.

“Yeah, I know,” Neil replies calmly.  “You’re okay?  You should sleep.”

“I will hang up on you,” Andrew says, but the fact he’s threatening instead of just doing it means that he won’t.  He coughs, finally, which is a sure-fire sign of surrender. 

“We aren’t playing this weekend,” Neil says.  Andrew knows that.  Neil frowns at himself, and clarifies, “Yes or no?”

It’s not _do you want me there_ , a question that Andrew might still find difficult to answer, or _do you want me to stay away_ , which Neil doesn’t really want to hear ‘no’ to.  Words are still hard, sometimes, but they’ve gotten better at getting out of their own way over the years, even if it means sidestepping rather than bulling in headlong.

“Are you familiar with the fact that respiratory diseases are catching?”

“You sound like Aaron,” Neil needles.  “Also, not an answer.”

Andrew makes a low noise like a growl, but he also says, “Yes.”

Neil allows himself a smile, already planning the trip in his head.  “Then I’ll see you tonight.”

3) _They’re okay._

When Neil’s phone goes off just after 6AM in the morning, it’s Andrew at the other end saying, “Don’t turn on the TV.”

“Too late,” Neil replies.  “Ichirou beat you to it.”

On screen, Davidson – a graduated Raven striker who plays for Atlanta now – is recounting in gruesome detail Riko breaking Jean’s fingers when Riko was seventeen.  

“Turn it off,” Andrew says.  Neil reaches for the remote and does so, his own fingers feeling a little numb.  “What do you mean, Ichirou beat me to it?”

“He rang this morning, told me that this was going to happen.  Apparently we’re allowed to confirm or deny if we like.  It’s not like there wasn’t already speculation.”

“So he approved this?”  Andrew sounds angry about it, but Neil doesn’t quite see why.

“I don’t think he really cares.  I mean, Tetsuji’s name is already mud, and Riko’s dead.  Have you talked to Kevin?  I called Jean, but Kevin didn’t answer his phone.”

“No.  I just saw it when I turned the TV on.  Jean?”  Andrew has what Neil feels to be an irrational level of hatred for Jean, so the fact that he even says Jean’s name is surprising.

“Renee’s there, he’s okay.  I mean, he’s a wreck, but he’ll be okay.”

“And Thea will be with Kevin.  I’ll call him after this.”

“There’s going to be fallout,” Neil mutters.  It’s Saturday and he only has an afternoon practice, but by then the stadium will be a media scrum.  “I’ll talk to PR, they’ll want me to make a statement.  God, just – they know so much about what happened to Kevin and Jean.  I don’t know that they’ll cope with that all being – out there.  Public knowledge.”

“They’ll be okay,” Andrew says.  There’s a noise on his end of the line that Neil needs a moment to identify as a voice over a loudspeaker.

“Is that – where are you?”

“The airport,” Andrew replies, like this should be obvious.  

“You don’t have a game though.”

“Neil.  I’m coming to you,” he says with a dash of irritation.  “I’ve sent you my arrival time.  Don’t leave me stranded there.”

“Oh.  Yeah, I’ll pick you up.”  Now that he’s got it, Neil doesn’t need to ask why Andrew is coming.  He’s slow sometimes, but he catches up quick.  Now the TV is quiet and he has Andrew in his ear, his skin has stopped crawling.  “Hey.  I’m okay.”

“You’re a mess,” Andrew corrects, which is enough to drag a very soft laugh out of Neil.

4) _We’re okay._

They very rarely fight – Neil can count the times they have in the last six years on both hands, with a few fingers to spare.  Matt tells him sometimes that’s unusual, because even he and Dan throw down every few weeks over something, but Matt doesn’t understand.  He doesn’t know how every part of them is built on refusal to give into their baser, darker instincts when it comes to that, because accepting faults in your partner – and yourself – isn’t the same as indulging them. 

These days every time they argue, it’s rooted in their being apart.  Sometimes it is subtly so, but this isn’t that.  Neil’s base in New York puts him at an advantage because he’s performing well on a successful team, which increases his chance of Court selection.  Andrew’s team is smaller and less successful, but he has already been offered a place once, and almost certainly will be again.   

Andrew hasn’t said before in as many words that they need to be closer together, but last night he did.  Neil, who in his heart of hearts wants exactly the same thing, had put his foot down and refused.

They aren’t the kind of people who yell.  Neil, though, had let his frustration at their situation get the better of him and had turned his vicious tongue on Andrew.  Andrew had hung up rather than do the same.    

Now Neil has spent the entire day shivering on the inside, surprised that he can feel this way just over words.  He forgets sometimes the capacity he has for cruelty, the way his temper escapes his control.

He’s surprised when his phone rings the same time it does every evening, but he answers even though his fingers twitch a little.  He wants to ignore it, to leave his apartment and run in circles until his heart threatens to give out, but he’ll be back here with his hand hovering over his phone afterwards anyway.  He may as well skip the panic.

“Andrew, I didn’t mean-” Neil starts, only for Andrew to stop him dead.

He warns, “Don’t you dare lie to me.”  

“I,” Neil attempts, and then halts and closes his eyes.  Fear has never gotten him anywhere, the same way anger hasn’t, so he breathes it all out in a long sigh of air.  “Yes.  Then I did mean it.  I shouldn’t have said it, though.”

“I don’t remember you always being so quick to take the blame,” Andrew says, cool even by his standards.

“I shouldn’t have said any of that,” Neil repeats.  “Except for ‘no’.”

“Oh, was there a no?  Because all I heard was reasons why I shouldn’t ask.”

Neil winces.  “Well, I guess my original statement stands then.”

“If it’s a no, it’s a no,” Andrew clarifies, slow like Neil is a particularly foolish child.  “But don’t blame me for all the reasons you won’t say yes like it’s my fault that you want to.”

Neil doesn’t have anything to say to that but words Andrew hates to hear, so he stays quiet.

“I’ll keep asking until I get a solid answer,” Andrew says, and the relief Neil feels at that is staggering.  It shouldn’t be, not really, but when Neil spent every second of today questioning whether he pushed hard enough to break, it’s confirmation he desperately needs.

“So,” Neil says, and then swallows hard.  “We’re okay.”

“Yes,” he replies, “We’re okay.”

5) –

Neil wakes up and falls down.

Not literally – there’s just such a difference between nightmare and waking panic attack, and that’s the only way he knows how to describe it.  As soon as he’s awake the bad dream is gone, but the panic is so viscerally real that it leaves him blind and deaf.

He’s so slow to come out of them, alone at night.

His heart is still a rapid tattoo against his ribs when he fumbles for his phone.  He clasps it close, pinning it between his head and the sweat-damp pillow so he can’t drop it off the bed.

He’d done that once and hadn’t been able to make himself get up to get it even as it buzzed and shuddered on the carpet.  Andrew had been quietly furious over it, irrationally sure that something had happened to Neil while he tried to call him back, angry that Neil lay there paralysed and thinking he was going insane while Andrew was too far away to do anything.  So now Neil makes sure that that doesn’t happen.

There’s no voice at the other end, just the click of the phone being answered and then silence.  Neil can’t hear it over his own panting, but he knows if he can slow himself down he’ll be able to make out the even in-and-out of Andrew’s breath.

He just – breathes, and touches his thumb to each of his fingers and then his mouth, a pattern that slows from frantic as his heart rate does.  Then he can hear the shuffle of Andrew moving in bed, or the huff of his exhale as he smokes, or the sound of the coffee machine humming, or just his breath, over and over and over.

Nothing about Neil is fixable, but it can be gentled, softened into something that both of them can handle.  If he wakes with his phone still counting call time in the morning, then that’s fine; he can afford it.

6) _You’re late._

Neil has seen a lot of airports in his life, and this one is more familiar than most.  He swings his bag over his shoulder and makes his way through the crowds of people, pulling out his phone as he does so.

Andrew picks up with a low, “You’re late.”

“My flight was delayed,” Neil replies, even though Andrew no doubt already knows that.  “Are you here?”

“Outside.”  

“Am I going to be able to find you?  Jesus – it’s packed in here,” Neil says, as someone brushes heavily against his shoulder and he narrowly darts out of the way of a tiny woman pushing a heavily laden trolley.  

“If you open your eyes, probably,” Andrew says, blowing out into the receiver.

“Have you been waiting long?”

“Forever,” is the reply, a double-meaning that makes Neil’s heart beat a little faster.  It’s not intentional – this is Andrew, who says what he means at the expense of kindness – but double-speak is Neil’s native language, and it’s an echo of his thoughts anyway.

There’s a big open area for cars to pull in to pick people up and drop them off at the front doors, but Andrew would have been ticketed by now he was parked there.  Neil looks anyway, just in case Andrew thinks that pissing off a parking warden is ideal entertainment for the morning.  There’s no sinister black sports car hanging around, so Neil starts towards the parking area.

“I’m just coming out now,” he says, keeping his eyes peeled.  He’s tired enough that he is ready to collapse into an air-conditioned car, like he hasn’t just been sitting down on a plane for a few hours.  He maintains that planes are just too loud, all those people so close to him wearing him to the bone.

“You came out a while ago,” Andrew returns.  Neil snorts, and then smiles.

“I can see you,” he says.  Andrew is leaning against the hood of the Maserati, phone to his ear and cigarette in his other hand.  The sun is caught in his hair, turning it bright gold against the black of his clothes and car.  He looks up at that and unerringly straight to Neil.

The expression on his face – still, calm, quiet – unfolds just the tiniest amount at the sight of Neil.  It isn’t something that Neil thinks he will ever be used to.  Andrew flicks the cigarette butt away and doesn’t hang up.

“Don’t stare all day,” he advises Neil, but there is amusement in the lines of his face as he looks Neil up and down.  Even now that look makes his face warm up, like he hasn’t had plenty of proof that Andrew finds him attractive.

“I wasn’t planning on it,” Neil replies, starting across the asphalt.  “I’m not going to miss this airport.”

“No, you aren’t,” Andrew says, raising an eyebrow.  “We’ve got a game in Denver in two weeks.  Did you think we were going to drive?”

“It would be a long trip on a bus,” Neil acknowledges.  “You know what I mean.  No more back-and-forth.  We get to live together again.”

Andrew probably wants to say, we could have lived together again months ago if you weren’t such a stubborn asshole.  He doesn’t, though.  He just says, “I’m not going to miss that city.”

They’re metres apart when they finally flip their phones shut.

“Hey,” Neil says, putting himself close enough for Andrew to reach out and touch, a satellite returning to its orbit.  “I’m here.”


End file.
